BannedBooks22

Faith Tyranski Dr. Ellis Banned Books Seminar 2 key takeaways 1) Banning a reality that you don't like, does not strike such reality from the entirety of the world. Oftentimes, parents attempt to ban books like Drama for being too sexually explicit or THUG life because of the tension surrounding race; yet by banning those two books, sure the students have less access to topics that their parents deem inappropriate; yet, what happens when the students walk into their classroom and not every student sitting at a desk is white, blonde, and blue-eyed? Or when that same student walks into a mall on a Friday night and sees two partners of the same sex kissing as they part ways. Just because one form of literature becomes banned, does not equate to the fact that the entire world shall morph into that parent's desired view.  2) The outstanding ramifications; when the book is banned, the students are blocked from understanding that material or becoming exposed to it; however, these st...

 1. Firstly, what I have enjoyed the most is learning about why these books are banned. "Diverse content" and "sexually explicit" content that we have read, talked about, and analyzed in class. Seeing why books with incredible moral lessons are being banned has been both fascinating and disheartening. Opening up dialogues about different perspectives and cultures is important in building our understandings of each other and the human race as a whole. Taking away these perspectives limits human empathy. Reality makes you smarter.  2. What I've also learned is that uncomfortableness is important in our understanding of dismantling past structures (yes Scott, Khanna scholar). Being uncomfortable opens up dialogues, and it gives us the chance to understand why and how things are banned. 

 Two things that I have recognized over our semester looking at banned books are two reasons why these books are being banned. Looking at each book and seeing the common factors has helped me to understand why people are so afraid of their children being exposed to the content of these books. One thing I've learned is that each instance of banning comes from a surface level interpretation of each book's content. The surface level observations present in the story are what these parents are afraid of, and that's what they are afraid of exposing these kids to. This is almost comical to me, because they are exposing the fact that they haven't read the book, don't really know what its about, and don't really care about what the book's purpose is. They are so focused on how the visual and setting based elements will effect their child that they don't even stop to think about what the book is attempting to portray. They only care about the set pieces, because ...

One big takeaway from this class is that a lot of the books we see being banned are ones from diverse perspectives that do not align with the traditional, white male-dominated, hetero-normative standards of society. It seems as if a lot of these bannings come from a place of fear of change and a fear of elevating the voices that our society has squashed from the start. People do not want to acknowledge the privilege that some carry and how that has shaped the world we see today, and many feel that this can be brought up through conversations surrounding these banned books. Overall, I think it is important to really analyze a text and its reasons for being banned in order to get to the heart of the argument being made because it is much deeper than just banning books. A second takeaway is to evaluate who is really affected by banning these books. It is one thing to have a book be banned and to assess and acknowledge why it truly was banned, but it does not do as much good if time is not...

 1. The first major takeaway from this course, thus far, has been the hypocrisy shown by people banning books. We have often discussed how the people banning books are not the ones reading them. I think that point is very important going into the Critical Race Theory discussion, as the ones banning the teaching of CRT, are rarely the ones experiencing discrimination. Teaching children an accurate history of the United States, the existence of biases, and the presence of discrimination across the nation produces generations of knowledgable and empathetic youth. Protecting students' innocence is not an excuse to promote ignorance.  2. Another main takeaway that I think is important to note in the discussion, is that many of the students unable to read these books, are seen as consenting adults. In a majority of states in the US, the age of consent is sixteen. It astounds me that these "children" are legally old enough to consent to sex, but too young to read about sex or di...

 On March 22, 2022, the Washington Posted published an article titled,  Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries (the link is included at the bottom of my blog--it's a great read). This article imminently caught my attention, and as I read the piece, I noticed how it highlighted and confirmed a lot of our points from class discussions. One main takeaway from class is that representation is essential in a child's psychological growth and wellbeing; Natanson writes that Psychologists, academics, and librarians "see value in introducing children to books that contain challenging material, including of the sexual kind, provided it is done with appropriate context, care, and tact" (5). Natanson makes a point of introducing how professionals see that the books being censored are positive novels for young individuals to read. However, parents who are often not professionals in this field are the ones arguing for the censorship of books. The article ...

  Two Takeaways from the Course   1.      The practice of book banning can limit a person’s ability to understand themselves or understand others. While people who ban books believe they are “protecting” their children, they are harming not only their own child’s empathy but also further “othering” students in their class who otherwise have no representation in literature. 2.      Limiting the ideas and identities that can be present in the classroom reinforces prejudice and can undermine justice. Book bans disproportionately effect stories by or about black and brown people and LGBTQ+ stories. Literature can be a powerful tool for non-dominate groups and the books being banned are sharing counter histories (Like Reynold’s Stamped) and freedom dreaming.   

One insight I have learned so far about banned books is that the goal of these books is not to solve any issues but maybe make people aware of what is going on in the world and in teenagers' lives. These banned books expose children to different ideas and values. For example, The Hate U Give is a great novel because it gives teenagers and anyone who reads the book an insight into police brutality and code-switching, to name a few. My first time reading The Hate U Give was in this class but I wish it could have been a book that I was required to read in high school. I never really understood the extent of police brutality and racial profiling. But, racial profiling has always been a hateful aspect of our society and I wish I could have learned about it earlier than I did. The same goes for code-switching. I knew about assimilation and how it is deep rooted in US society, but I never understood how black people feel that they have to change their language and the way that they act in...

 1. The first main takeaway I have from the course is that literature has traditionally been published and marketed to serve white, wealthy protestant consumers. Seeing children's literature and the publishing industry as a conservative force is a new view for me, but one that makes sense from a historical standpoint. When we look at which books are banned, we must consider who it is benefitting and who it is disadvantaging.  2. The second main takeaway I have from this course is that we should not shy away from what makes us uncomfortable (Khanna). Our discomfort is rooted in something that can be dissected and examined. To expand on my first point, by paying attention to what makes those with the most social power/status uncomfortable we can get at the root of a lot of social issues. This can be accomplished through literature.  

  My first major takeaway is about why those in power ban books. All of the books we have read so far in this class were banned in bad faith. While proponents of these books being banned say that books like these feature content matter not suitable for children, they are really just silencing underrepresented voices and sheltering straight white children from cultures and experiences outside of their own. Not only does this expose the inherent racism, sexism, and homophobia in the institutions that make the decisions as to what is and isn't taught, it also shows that these white people in power are more afraid of the stories of miniority groups than they are of violence, swearing, and other, slightly more reasonable things to censor. My other major takeaway from this class is how important it is to have the discussions these books have generated. I feel like I have learned a lot from not only the books themselves but the discussions we have had in class surrounding them. Even thoug...

I would say that two of the biggest themes of the course that I have felt compelled to and fixated on are women and power and the importance of youth. Through the books,  The Color Purple  and   Lysistrata  I feel like I learned a lot about women and power through the simple fact that both of these works convey which is that silence does not equate to obedience. I talked a lot about this in my essay on   The Color Purple   and how at first it might seem like Celie is this “obedient and submissive women” which is a cliché far too common, but on a deeper look you can see the moments of disobedience in her silence. Even, as Martin Luther King Jr. expresses in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” this country is deeply shaken and threatened by nonviolent and silent acts of disobedience. In Lysistrata, the idea of women having agency and power is what all the men feared the most as the women attained economic, sexual, and political power. The main purpose of the p...

               While the texts we've read this semester have highlighted individual causes for the banning of books, I believe that the articles by Ringel and Mullally exemplify the most pervasive issues with book banning and censorship. Specifically, I believe that Mullally's discussion of the history of censorship would be most important for people newly entering the discussion to hear. In her article, Mullally compares book banning of the past with book banning today. It is through this comparison that Mullally arrives at her most important point. While book banning of the past was executed nationwide by a more-regulated agency, today it is not. Currently, book banning is an entirely individual process based on people's personal opinions. Thus, book banning of today is used primarily to restrict the ideas present within society. The fact that books continue to be banned despite the lack of authority shows how corrupt of an issue this is. I...

Scott's Pretty Three Points 1. Banners of Books / Book Banners want to shelter children from realities of the world. In some ways, it is the possibly positive idea of children not seeing very violent things, such as      a. Exposing children to the trauma of rape at the beginning of "the Color Purple"     b. Exposing children to the violence of sexual assault seen in "yolo" however, this can be perverted when it talks about older teens who are sexually and mentally aware enough to consume these stories and should learn empathy to disenfranchised individuals of this nature. Additionally, there should exist resources for children who have gone through traumatic instances to know that their lives are valid and they are not alone. More pervasively, parents who dislike BIPOC joy and love, the idea of white people being seen as oppressive, LGBTQ joy an love, the idea of straight people being seen as oppressive, female joy and love, the idea of men being seen...

1. Banning books is a way to push the white supremacist agenda, as seen through the case in York, PA when they banned 270+ books about black and brown experiences. This was also demonstrated through the specific banning of The Hate U Give for reasons such as youth activism and revolution.  2. Keeping books on separate shelves makes people feel invalidated about their life experiences, whether that includes their sex, gender, race, or sexuality. This is especially prevalent for young minds that are not fully developed, because if they see themselves as "other," they will begin to believe it. 

  Paul Ringel’s “How Banning Books Marginalizes Children” really gets to the heart of what bothers me personally about the trend of banning books. Ringel explains how book banning has been used to shelter kids from different kinds of experiences for centuries. Early children-focused entertainment tried to distance itself from any kind of content that could be considered questionable in the eyes of adults. As time has gone on, and society has slowly inched towards progressivism, creators have been more willing to introduce these “taboo” topics to children, but parents are still resistant. Ringel argues that restricting children from diverse subject matter is rooted in bigoted 19th-century white, Christian philosophy and that children actually benefit from engaging with these “complicated” materials.  Ringel points out how children’s literature has often been used to introduce complicated and diverse perspectives to wider audiences—specifically citing R.J. Palacio’s 2012 hit nov...

 Throughout this semester, we have read several books that are known for being challenged and banned in schools and libraries across the United States. We have also had a lot of insightful conversations about these novels and why they were banned. However, Mullally & Ringel's texts take what we have been discussing in class but give us facts, background, legal battles, and more to give us a broader context to think about. These articles truly shared many interesting stories and facts that I want to highlight and discuss...  Ringel discusses the matters of the publishing industry and the role they have played in censorship. One statement that Ringel made that really caught my attention was that "publishers today still haven't figured out how to address the subject for younger children in a way that's both historically accurate and acceptable to parents." The idea that it needs to be historically accurate and acceptable to the parents hints at the notion that th...

     While reading Ringel’s article, “How Banning Books Marginalizes Children,” a quote really struck me: “More broadly, keeping books about certain types of children or experiences out of libraries or putting them on separate shelves perpetuates a troubling vision of a sheltered American childhood that in fact has rarely existed” (Ringel 4-5). By telling American children that their experiences and lives are not valid or appropriate, we run the risk of making them even more excluded than they already feel. Keeping the books that deal with relevant life experiences out of libraries and on separate shelves is troubling. Even as a twenty-year-old, when I look in the LGBTQ+ section of Barnes and Noble, I barely feel safe around my family. They question why I am even looking in that section to begin with, telling me that it is a sin to read these types of books and that they will "turn me gay." The fact that it is separated allows for more marginalization and could possibly o...

 Ringel's article looked at the correlation between banning books and the content from these books being about marginalized communities. The first half of this semester has made the connection more than apparent, as almost every single piece we have looked at has been about marginalized communities. It is unfortunate that this is not surprising, as the general public has been scared of contrary opinions to their own as long as the concept has been around.  Something in my life that has stood out occurred when I was in middle school. My family and I were driving to a family function. I don't exactly remember the context, but my mother said something racist, and justified it by saying "people like to be around people who look like them and act like them, its just true." I remember feeling shocked and disgusted by what my mother had said. Through school and life in general, we interact with those who are different then us, and my mother is no different. How could she hol...

 Faith Tyranski Dr. Ellis Banned Books  Blog Post  Ringel on Banning Books Throughout this semester, our class has been developing a working storyline, which details how books come to be banned, but moreover why people actively seek to ban books. One reoccurring part of our discussions centered around how parents or school administrators seek to ban books in their children's libraries or even books that are specifically targeted towards children. Ringel notes that "since the inception of the American children’s literature industry in the 1820s, publishers have had to grapple with the question of who their primary audience should be," and our class expanded on this idea, to incorporate the factor of maturity and autonomy. Building upon that initial claim by Ringel has enabled us to understand the banning of books as going beyond trying to segregate books based on target audiences, but rather as an attempt to halt progression, awareness, and systemic change.  When...

In Mullally’s article, I was shocked by the statistic that an estimated 82-97 percent of book challenges go unreported (2).  If Drama is publicly controversial for an extremely mild reference to homosexual relationships, I can not even imagine the triggers that quietly pull other books off the shelf.  I was also extremely impressed with Pico for organizing a student-led opposition to their school board's decision. I was partially impressed because I was not intellectually mature or motivated enough to do so when I was seventeen. I also realized that in the time frame of him going to court and the multiple appeals, he likely turned eighteen and was considered a legal adult. He could vote in a presidential election, serve on a jury, or get drafted but could not read a book that mentions homosexual relationships. Out of curiosity, I looked up the age of consent in New York. In 2017 the age of consent in New York was lifted from fourteen to seventeen. Therefore, in 1975 when Pico ...

Scott Clifford 2022 03 21      As a class, I believe we have reached the consensus that we are not opposed to the idea of controlling the media that enters children's hands on principle. We ruled that books with actually sexually explicit content should stay out of their hands, and that triggering content should be carefully monitored when presented to children. How then, can we differentiate our desire to regulate books against those with whom we disagree? Perhaps this question is moot / simple but this is a blog.     I want to pursue the difference in methods and language in the various groups of this issue. One idea Mullally illuminates is how books' opponents "challenge" these books. The word "challenge" brings connotations of a fair fight and a righteous battle, but it hides the reality of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict. People who contest these books dislike how it opposes their views, but it would be ludicrous to imagine the books tel...